Paul Cezanne

Paint stands for no other end than itself. The artist paints an apple or a head: it is merely a pretext for line and color, nothing more '

On January 19, 1839 Paul Cézanne was born in Aix-en-Provence for a successful retailer and his mistress. Cezanne's domineering father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne, and his mother Anne-Elisabeth Honorine Auburt not marry before Paul was five. This may well have branded him with the stigma of illegitimacy causes him discomfort as a child. 

At 13 Cezanne attended College Bourbon in Aix, where he met Emile Zola (who ended up being a famous writer). This friendship was to last almost a lifetime. Cézanne attended classes at a local design college. When Zola moved to Paris to study, he sent letters to Cezanne fill him with the desire to travel to Paris to paint. 

Cezanne's uncomfortable relationship with his father made it difficult to approach him about his dreams. Louise-Auguste was not interested in art and wanted his son to have a dignified profession. 

In 1859 JAS DE BOUFFAN, an impressive 18th century manor house was the family home and Cezanne spent a year studying law. He was a successful scholar transfer all of its first studies. His desire to travel to Paris, but eventually overcome his fear of his father, and he approached him to confess his desire to become an artist. His appeal was met with disdain. It was not until April 1861 that his father is admitted and permitted moved to Paris, giving him an allowance for his expenses. 

Cezanne's stay in Paris lasted only six months. He destroyed many canvases during bouts of black depression and returned home full of confidence in the rejection of his chosen career. A year spent working with his father, however, convinced him to try a painter's life again. 

Cezanne returned to Paris suffers another set-back when he failed the admission test for the official painting school - the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His paintings were also rejected by the Salon. Pissarro introduced to Cezanne impressionist painters like Manet and Degas. He had a reputation for being an eccentric and very strange after exhibiting strange antisocial behavior such as refusing to shake hands with Manet give the excuse that he (Cezanne) had not washed in eight days. 

At 30 Cézanne seemed to turn a corner with his art. He changed his style and his habits.

He met Hortense Fiquet. She became his mistress. Although they seemed to be very different, their relationships, long kept secret from the artist's father, lasted many years. The focus of Cezanne art that were previously black and morbid, gradually changed and he began to concentrate on landscape issues. 

After the birth of his son (also hidden from the artist's father), Cezanne moved with his family to Pontoise, where Pissarro lived. Over the next two years the two men worked together. Staying first at Pontoise and Auvers then nearby, Cézanne spent long periods of Pissarro, who was nine years older. Pissarro was like a father figure and mentor Cezannne techniques to impressionist painting. Cezanne's work was then exhibited with other Impressionist works in 1874. 

Pissarro's influence was important in Cezanne's artistic development. His palette decreased slightly, and he remained throughout his career devoted to the practice of painting directly from nature. But Cezanne reacted against the lack of structure in Impressionist paintings, and said that he intended to do with Impressionism "something solid and durable, like art museums." He is actually walking resolutely out Impressionism and is located next to the Post-Impressionist artists Seurat, van Gogh and Gauguin. 

For many years, still lifes and landscapes were Cezanne's preoccupation. Completing more than 200 still-life compostions in his life, Cézanne wanted to 'conquer Paris with an apple, "and is famous for his still life paintings." Apples and oranges "is one of his most famous still-life compositions. Using the same methodical analysis of these works, which he did with his landscapes, Cezanne was concerned with recording minute variations in tone and color observed over longer periods, and types of empirical geometry he considered as the most frequent in nature - the 'cylinder ball and cone. " 

In 1881, Cezanne's brother in-law bought a house situated on a hill overlooking the Arc valley with the mountain of Saint-Victoire in the distance. Mont Sainte-Victoire was one of his favorite topics. That was the essence of all that he had felt had slipped impressionists - firmness, solidity, permanence. 

1886 seemed to Émile Zola's novel L'oeuvre, the protagonist, who was a failed artist and bore many similarities with Cezanne. The artist was deeply wounded and ended his friendship with Zola. In the same year, ended Cezanne the deception and revealed the existence of his family to his father and mother. He married Hortense. Later, in October, Cezanne's father died leaving his son an inheritence that made him rich and independent. 

The next few years as Cezanne has become increasingly withdrawn. His family lived in Paris while he stayed in Aix, with his sister Marie. He visited Paris, less and less and stopped painting for the Salon preferred to live the life of a recluse. It seemed that he was almost forgotten, some younger artists who were interested in his work had assumed that he was dead. 

In his late fifties Cezanne's paintings finally began to attract the attention they deserve. In 1895 organized Ambroise Vollard, the famous art dealer, an exhibition of Cezanne's work in Paris. It had been 20 years since his work was seen in the French capital. There was murmers of apreciation and acceptance of his genious. Vollard then, in 1897, bought every painting from Cezanne's studio in Fontainebleu. Young admirers began to travel to Aix to see him at work. 

Cezanne's work to develop. He revisited themes again and again, each time changing its strategy. 'The Great bathers a monumental piece that shows the figures for rural women is a revision of a popular topic, the first attempt in 1875. 

JAS DE BOUFFAN would be sold in 1899 to settle Cezanne mother's estate. He moved to an apartment in Aix and later buit a studio on the hill-side of Chemin des Lauves outside Aix. He went to work every day. 

Although his health detriorated, in recent years, Cezanne still religiously went to work every day. Normally, he traveled by carriage, so the distance was too great a burden for him to go. One day, angry about fare increases, he decided to go and was caught in a rain. The cold that resulted was later pneumonia and a week later, on 22 October 1906, Cezanne was dead. 

The art of Paul Cézanne is considered today as being of enormous importance for the developoment of modern art. From his search for the underlying structural composition came Cubism and then abstraction. Cezanne's use of color tone, and his obsession with the formal elements of composition allowed the artists who came after questioning what they saw and how they are represented, what they saw on their screen. 

Pablo Picasso said, after the artist "My only master ... Cezanne was the father of us all". Cezanne is often described as the "father of modern art." Whether such recognition and is justified or not critics can judge, it is clear that Cezanne was a visionary ahead of his time. Art historian Lawrence Gowing remarked once that Cézanne was "reaching a kind of modernity that does not exist and still do not."